Atle Gerhardsen Gallery, Berlin Private Collection Phillips de Pury & Company, London, 13 February 2009, lot 104 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Exhibited
Berlin, Atle Gerhardsen Gallery, Never Never Landscape, 10 September - 23 October 2004
Literature
Beatrix Ruf, Rod Mengham and Gloria Sutton, Laura Owens, Zurich, 2006, no. 152, p. 214-215 (illustrated)
Catalogue Essay
Painted in 2004, Laura Owens’ earthy composition, Untitled is a prominent example of the artist’s pioneering and innovative approach to painting. One of the most influential artists of her generation, Owens has most recently been celebrated in her mid-career survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art that opened in November 2017, cementing her reputation on an international platform.
Exemplary of the artist’s keen interest in the function of painting, Owens employs illusionistic techniques, drawing on an encyclopedic range of sources from folk art, needlework and wallpaper to high art, to form her seemingly naïve depictions. Guided by her personal life and interests, Owens creates canvases imbued with a sense of delight and discovery. Recognized for her pursuit of unfamiliar forms and paintings that address the physical and associative qualities of geographical locations, Owens' work resonates with a varied range of almost poetical sources. The present work, a flurry of decorative, horticultural forms, appears familiar in ornament, recalling patterned floral wallpaper, whilst simultaneously being removed from a landscape or definable context.